


Boundaries

by Rhiannon87



Category: Uncharted
Genre: Gen, Obsession
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-03
Updated: 2012-07-03
Packaged: 2017-11-09 02:07:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/450076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhiannon87/pseuds/Rhiannon87
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The lines between loyalty, devotion, and worship are fine ones indeed, and Talbot has long since stopped caring on which side he falls.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Boundaries

He owed her everything.

From others, it would sound like a cliché, like hyperbole, but he meant it. Everything he was, he owed to Katherine Marlowe. Before he met her, he had no purpose. The third son of the illustrious Talbot family, unneeded after the heir and the spare, and his intellect and ambition were being quietly smothered so as not to inconvenience anyone. Marlowe was an acquaintance of his father's-- the elder Talbot didn't respect her, but she was too influential for him to ignore. She had money and power, and that was enough to make sure that any mocking of her obsessions and conspiracies was conducted in hushed whispers.

She saw something in him, at nineteen, that made him stand out. She must have. Why else would she have approached him instead of his brothers? Why would she have found him, lurking at the edges of the sycophantic crowd around his parents, and asked, “Tell me, young Talbot, what do you know of Sir Francis Drake?”

She saved him from ending up like his older brothers, with the wives and children they hated, the mistresses they abused, the bastards they hid. With the inherited, unearned government posts that made them lazy and decadent and dull. With no point to their lives. They were men who could be traded out for any one of the thousands like them and no one would know the difference. He was better than that. He was better than them. Marlowe showed him that.

He took an officer's commission in the RAF after graduation, at her suggestion. He joined the SAS on her advice. He spent his deployments in the Middle East scouring museums and archives for information on Drake and Dee and Lawrence at her behest. And her retired after a decade of service at her recommendation-- though he never truly served the crown. He served her.

Marlowe had more than just power and money. She had knowledge. Centuries' worth of it, in tomes and maps and relics, and she shared it with him. She showed him what true power was-- not votes or sponsorships or titles-- but rather shadows, secrets, fear. He learned from her and became her right hand. He brought her soldiers, men returning from the war with no purpose and no hope, and became her commander.

His family never formally disowned him, but he was quietly and completely pushed out. A Major in the SAS was acceptable. Any association with a woman like Marlowe was something they would never respect. It became something of a joke, then, that she only called him by his family name. She always enjoyed irony.

Talbot knew what their lieutenants said about him, and her, and them. They made certain assumptions, and the first time he heard the rumors, he was livid. Marlowe just brushed it off. “Does their opinion actually matter to you?” she asked, not even looking up from her book, and of course it didn't. He learned not to react to the whispers and the gossip, though it still grated on him. It was... degrading, to imagine her in such a way, to think of her showing such weakness. Such human frailty. Marlowe was above that, and he would not let himself bring her to that base level. Not even in his own mind.

He was the one to bring her word of the missing ring, being offered for sale by one Nathan Drake. Marlowe laughed, her smile like a knife, and told him to make the deal. She gave him Drake's file to read, and God, he was such a simple man, really. A troubled childhood, a life of crime, an inability to form lasting relationships, going by the state of his marriage. Predictable. Utterly predictable. He sent ripples out through his networks, brought in new contacts, slowly reeled Nathan Drake in.

It was horrifying, then, when he realized how thoroughly Drake and his associates played him. How much they made him look the fool. Marlowe stood in the middle of their library, staring at the shattered pieces of the figurehead, and told him that they would let Drake do what he did best: find their treasure. Talbot would simply be required to follow in his footsteps and take whatever he found.

A simple task, almost insultingly so, but in the wake of his failure (the answer was right there, hanging above their heads, and he never realized), he cannot argue with her judgment. So he followed them, to France and Syria, and then he continued ahead to Yemen. Nathan Drake was stubborn, almost pathologically so, obsessed with reclaiming the treasure he seemingly believed to be his due. He had no claim to such things. If anyone was Drake's heir, it was Marlowe herself. She was the one truly walking in his footsteps.

Then Nathan Drake was removed from the picture, handed off to a pirate who looked quite eager to be the one to kill the man, and Talbot focused his attention on the logistics of reaching Iram. Their caravan arrived after a mere five days, and Marlowe congratulated him as they step through the gates and into the lost city.

She had, once again, given him everything.

There was no warning, when Drake and Sullivan appeared in the depths of the city. If he hadn't been patrolling the perimeter (only paranoia if they aren't actually after you), their attempt at flanking would have been a success. But it didn't matter, not really, because Nathan Drake is destruction personified. Where Marlowe sought order and control, Drake brought chaos, and with three pulls of a trigger he ruined everything. Almost twenty years of searching and struggle ripped away by one man in one moment.

He abandoned the soldiers to their fate and guided Marlowe back through the collapsing city. They would escape. They would live. They would have their vengeance and they would find some way to claim what is rightfully theirs. But to do that, they had to get out.

There was only one way out of the city, so really, it shouldn't have been a surprise that they ran into Drake and Sullivan as they fled. And while it might not have been as satisfying as forcing Drake to watch his friend and his wife be executed in front of him, leaving the two of them to die in Iram would have to do. Talbot had his gun drawn, ready to shoot them both, when the floor gave way under them. He landed close enough to the edge of the pit to crawl to solid ground, as did Drake.

Marlowe didn't.

He couldn't reach her. There was nothing near him, no ropes or boards, nothing that would extend his reach, he couldn't get to her and she was going to die. She couldn't die, not while he lived. It went against everything in him. He was supposed to die for her. He would never have to see her end.

She turned her back on him, appealed to Drake, told him to prove himself worthy of the name. And Drake refused. For all his pride and obsession, he  _ refused _ . 

And God help him, in desperation, he threw himself on Drake's mercy. Panicked,  _ begging _ , still reaching for Marlowe even though he knew she was too far to save: “You can't just let her die!”

Sullivan told him to ignore her, to just run. But Drake met his eyes across the chasm, and Talbot hated him then, hated himself, for the understanding he saw in the other man's gaze. He could only watch as Drake tried to pull Marlowe out, tried and failed, and he could do nothing but watch as she slipped beneath the sand with a wretched, choked scream.

He was never supposed to outlive her. It was never supposed to end like this.

If Marlowe didn't leave Iram alive, then none of them would. Talbot staggered to his feet, gaze still fixed on the place where she had disappeared, and drew his knife. They would all die here. He would make sure of that.


End file.
